I spent the last two days in Mobile, AL, which is about as deep as you can go into the south without pitching into the sea. I ate fried pickles, fried green tomatoes, fried catfish, fried shrimp, fried oysters, fried crab cakes (at least I think they were fried) and fried hush puppies. And now I weigh 10,000 lbs.
I can't really fry things. Stir-fry, sure. But deep fry? Not so much. I tried to deep fry green tomatoes last year and nearly burned down the house. There was a lot of running around with damp towels, trying to get the smoke alarm to shut off, and a great deal of opening of windows and doors and freaking out. On the plus side, the tomatoes tasted wonderful. They were seasoned with the piquant sauce of narrowly averted disaster.